A timeless childhood request. For many, nighttime narratives have long been an indispensable part of the daily wind-down.

In Laura Bilodeau Overdeck's house, the flavor of those bedtime stories has always been a little different. They involve numbers — and not just the kind found in tales of the three little pigs or one big bad wolf.

"My husband and I have always given our kids a little funny math problem at night," says the Short Hills mother. And they didn't use bribes.

Thanks to their ritual, the math itself becomes a treat. In her stories, numbers are the characters, revealing lessons about the weather outside, animals in a forest (wolves included) and the colors that shine from the Empire State Building.

"We live in a country where people can't stand math," Overdeck says. "In our house, math had become like dessert."

Apparently, the Overdecks were onto something. These candy-coated word problems soon became an email newsletter delivering daily math challenges set in the real world. The emails proved exponentially successful. In just two years, Overdeck's math problems populated a "Bedtime Math" blog and website, the blog became a book deal, and then Overdeck's first book became another book.

Parents and children gathered to celebrate Overdeck's Bedtime Math concept at Jersey City's Word bookstore Tuesday, proving that math doesn't have to look like one-dimensional numbers. Kids pushed a large assortment of glow sticks into foam balls to build tetrahedrons (pyramids) and hexahedrons (cubes). The goal is to construct Day-Glo houses and apartment buildings.

Overdeck is using the glow-in-the-dark parties at bookstores nationwide to promote "Bedtime Math 2: This Time It's Personal." Out this month, it's a follow-up to her first book, "Bedtime Math: A Fun Excuse to Stay Up Late" (Macmillan Children's Publishing, 2013).

Kayla Rose builds a glow-in-the-dark structure using glowsticks and foam balls. Overdeck is using the activity to promote 'Bedtime Math' at bookstores across the country. John Munson/The Star-Ledger

Unlike reading, which usually becomes part of a child's bedtime ritual early on — even if they're just listening — math is often considered a regimented activity, says Overdeck.

It's a perspective established in elementary years, reinforced before students have even arrived at algebra. And then "they go to school and their first experience with math is homework," says Overdeck, 44, the founder and president of the nonprofit Bedtime Math Foundation, based in Summit.

Although her own curiosity for numbers was hardly lacking — for fun as a child, she decided to commit perfect squares to memory — Overdeck, who has a bachelor's degree in astrophysics from Princeton University and a public policy MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, is aware that for others, the "homework" stigma can stick.

Overdeck's word-problem email started as a simple list for her friends who wanted to try them on their children. "The thing just exploded," she says. "The list doubled in a week."

Now, the newsletter goes out to more than 50,000. In her Summit office, Overdeck's staff of seven works on word problems for the daily email and blog (BedtimeMath.org), also delivered through an app. Some questions are couched in current events. Take winter's salt shortage.

Jaivir Singh's mother says he's able to do third grade math in first grade, thanks to early exposure to the questions in Laura Overdeck's 'Bedtime Math' emails and book.John Munson/The Star-Ledger

New Jersey recently tried to buy 40,000 tons of extra rock salt from Maine, but an ancient law said that it had to be shipped on a U.S.-built ship — and the ship waiting for the job was from the Marshall Islands. So the salt came to New Jersey on a smaller American ship, just 9,500 tons at a time, requiring more back and forth trips.

Queries that follow vary for each child. The youngest children — called "wee ones" in Bedtime Math parlance — are asked to count by thousands to 9,000 tons of salt. Older children get more: If 10 towns in New Jersey each need 1,000 tons of the salt, can the ship bring enough for all of the towns on the first trip? A bonus: If a kitchen box of salt weighs half a pound, how many boxes would it take to fill a ton (or 2,000 pounds)? (Answer: No. Bonus answer: 4,000.)

Bedtime Math's target audience is the 3- to 9-year-old set. "I would say the sweet spot is like 5- or 6-year-olds," Overdeck says. That's when math anxiety can begin "By 8, a lot of girls are turned off," she says. Overdeck's own children — her daughter, 10, and sons, 8 and 5 — serve as an "in-house focus group."

Experiential learning can be found in many of Overdeck's Bedtime Math prompts. Much is tactile. One story involved a toilet paper Olympics, for example, timed to Sochi, with a long jump, shot put and relay races, all measured in bathroom tissue.

Some of Overdeck's word problems, delivered in a daily blog, use current events. Others, hands-on activities. John Munson/The Star-Ledger

Carol Levin, a youth services librarian at the Bridgewater branch of the Somerset County Library, helped pilot a Bedtime Math club called Crazy 8s over eight weeks with a group of third through fifth graders.

To talk about the Pythagorean Theorem, they sent stuffed animals down a 10-foot zipline. In the coming months, Crazy 8s will become an after-school program. At Franklin Elementary School in Summit, 50 children are signed up for three sections of the same club.